The Marriage that Made America

Why do we remember Martha Washington as Lady Washington?
Isn’t this the kind of aristocratic pretension that Mister Jefferson
taught us to reject? No. Very simply, the wives of the American generals were
known as the Lady Washington, the Lady Knox, the Lady Greene, etc., simply as a
way of identifying the spouses of our top Continental Army officers. More than
the sobriquet Lady Washington, Martha seems to have cherished the name the
enlisted men gave her—“the soldiers’ best friend.” She spent six of the eight
years that her husband was away from Mount Vernon with him in camp.

This alone entitles Lady Washington to our gratitude and
respect. Travel by coach was extremely dangerous in the 1770s. Coaches
overturned; ferries sank. And when she would finally arrive at the Army’s
winter quarters, she would be subject to camp diseases.

At the beginning of the Revolution, we were losing more young men
to smallpox than to British bullets or Hessian bayonets. His Excellency the
General was immune because he had suffered smallpox after traveling
to Barbados with his tubercular brother, Lawrence. But Martha had to
undergo inoculation against the dreaded killer. In Congress, John Adams went so
far as to require all new recruits to the Continental Army to undergo
inoculation against the disease.

Listening to Lady Washington, it becomes clearer that the Glorious
Cause of American Independence required more than the immortal words and the
powerful ideas of the Declaration and more, even, than the great military
victories over the British. Independency, as
Lady Washington called it, was also a psychological and social
question. A monarchical people—as we Americans then thought of ourselves—needed more than brilliant speeches and persuasive pamphlets to make the break.
Monarchy was a matter of sentiment.

To understand this, I have been greatly aided by my wife of thrity-five years. She has held regular social events in our home in Annapolis. One of
the most eagerly attended of these was a “Royal Wedding Reception” held on the
day of Kate and William’s nuptials in London. And another was a “Royal
Baby Shower,” held to celebrate the arrival of little George, a direct heir to
the ancient Throne of the United Kingdom. Her guests for these events were
dozens of local ladies, all decked out in hats and gloves. They flocked to our
home to be served on English china. All the souvenirs and royal paraphernalia
that we have inherited from my wife’s Canadian and Welsh ancestors were in use.
These events supported local charities.

The great popularity of “the Royals” is seen everywhere. Go to any
supermarket checkout. Go to the du Pont Mansion, “Winterthur,” and see the busloads of
eager visitors touring the Downton Abbey exhibit. Americans—especially American women—love this stuff.

This is not so surprising. The great nineteenth century political
scientist, Walter Bagehot, explained in his classic work, The English Constitution, how monarchy embodied the “dignified” aspect of government
while Parliament, powerful as it is, represented merely the “efficient”
machinery of democracy.

Bagehot argues with some force that most of us cannot really
follow the details of government budgets and foreign military engagements,
but everyone can identify with the central principle of
monarchy—which is the family. To be sure, we will probably never hear a
better defense of the ideal of marriage than that delivered by the Bishop of London at the Royal Wedding.

Breaking with royalty was not easy. It was the courage and
perseverance of General George Washington that carried the Revolution to
success. He was truly the “indispensable man.” But it is just as true that
Martha Washington was the indispensable woman.

Their marriage embodied the new republican ideal. And, as Dr.
Benjamin Rush, said of Washington’s massive presence: “There is not a king
in Europe that would not look like a valet de chambre by
his side.” And what queen could be found sitting by the bedside of a sick
soldier boy, nursing him and comforting him in his misery?

The Washingtons—both of them—were everything to us
in the Founding Era that King George III and Queen Charlotte were
not. Seeing them and their devotion to one another, seeing that intimate and
enduring partnership, Americans knew that we could indeed be the “New Order of
the Ages.” Surely Abigail Adams was right when she said, “George Washington is
the head of our government, but Martha
Washington is its heart.”

Today, all too casually, Americans are being told to cast aside
marriage. The goal of the most thorough progressives is not the expansion of
marriage, but its abolition. If we allow marriage to be
dissolved, we may find to our great sorrow, that just as the Washingtons’
marriage made America, unmaking marriage will unmake America.

Robert Morrison is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council.

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